Hideaway Strath too soon

Thank you for being my family. ♥

There wasn’t anything elaborate about the way the smoke-and-shadow soturi made her way toward the borders of Teaghlaigh — she spent more time out of them than she did in them, these days, looking for her lost son, the cub she’d blackmailed, her wayward daughter and, to some extent, her snowbound twin. It was stupid to look for Dagfinn when she knew that he was home in the tundra where he (they?) belonged. She couldn’t help it, though. She loved Arturo and Hemlock; she loved her remaining three children; but Lotte was blind to them, believing them safe and sound in the strath. She was fixated on the lost ones — those wolves she felt duty-bound to bring home and save. It had become her mission in life, replacing her desire to scout and explore, and although she was still home for several hours each day to cuddle with her husband and — dare she say it? — her wife, she was obsessed with the need to do something with the idle summer hours.

The crisp snap in the air hinted at the prelude to her favorite season, and maybe it was this that finally convinced Lotte to go home and stay there. She picked her way through the hinterlands with new resolve, making up her mind to let Roarke and Chusi go — she believed they were both alive somewhere but she regretted that they were alone and far from home. For Lotte, despite her children’s inevitable growth and Chusi’s adult status prior to her departure, they would always be tiny cubs in need of her protection and care — capricious and impulsive as she tended to be. Lotte wasn’t a good mother, but she meant well. In her head she’d built it up so high: she’d find Chusi and Roarke (in her head they were together, after all) and bring them back, and Eirlys, Mallaidh, Ceallach, Hemlock, and Arturo would rejoice at their triumphant return. It hadn’t worked out like that, though.

Lotte’s mind was alive with regret and hope, and the tangle of emotion made her already-stumbling paws clumsier. She’d been out in the heat for quite some time, and her thick, insulated fur wasn’t particularly kind to her in the hotter months. Heightened weariness was something she’d come to expect, and with the whorl of her inner strife, she could hardly be blamed for getting careless. The normally silent rogue stepped on a branch with a startlingly loud crack! and the unearthly groan that followed it didn’t make sense to her at first —

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When the dust settled, it became clear that Lotte had been bested, but not by any wolf. Oddly, there seemed to be no mark on the wolf who lay with her sides fluttering shallowly in the dust. The only sign she’d suffered any trauma was the slow, fluid-filled swelling of her abdomen and the grotesquely depressed swell of her rib cage. Scent would tell @Hemlock and @Arturo what Lotte herself couldn’t say; she was focused inward on the wet gurgle of her breath. Her tongue and gums were unnaturally pale, but she breathed. She wasn’t far from home, and her paws twitched feverishly with the itch to drag herself there — but there was no strength left in her body. As the light in her eyes began to dull with shock and pain, she lifted her voice in a soft and fluting whine, unable to manage a summoning howl.